[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----N.H., PENN., FLA., OHIO, MO., COLO., WASH., USA

[Rick Halperin]

February 26



NEW HAMPSHIRE:

No more death sentences



We are naturally horrified by a murder. We may want to avenge the horror, or we 
may want to prevent another such horror – using the strongest threat we can 
think of, legally approved killing.

But these reactions lead us in wrong directions. Families of murder victims 
tell us we do not avenge the horror by applying the death penalty, but continue 
the horror through their pain during the many years of death penalty legal 
proceedings. And statistics tell us that the threat of execution does not deter 
murderers.

More useful and satisfying responses to murder include supporting, as 
necessary, the families of both the perpetrator and the victim. More effective 
murder-prevention measures include better mental health and substance abuse 
treatment. We should expect our legislators to pass laws and appropriate funds 
to achieve these policies.

We can make a good beginning by asking our senators and representatives to pass 
House Bill 455 to replace the death sentence with life in prison without 
parole.

WILTRUD R. MOTT-SMITH

Loudon

(source: Leter to the Editor, Concord Monitor)








PENNSYLVANIA:

Death penalty sought in 2018 Carlisle homicide



Prosecutors will seek the death penalty against the man accused of shooting and 
killing 23-year-old Michael Burch as he walked down the street in Carlisle in 
2018.

Chief Deputy District Attorney Daniel Sodus filed a notice of aggravating 
circumstances against Craig Hines, 19, of Carlisle, Thursday, which allows for 
the death penalty if Hines is convicted of 1st-degree murder.

Hines is charged with 1st- and 3rd-degree murder, felony voluntary 
manslaughter, possession of a firearm by a prohibited person, possession of a 
firearm without a license and multiple counts of felony aggravated assault, 
misdemeanor simple assault and misdemeanor reckless endangerment, according to 
court records.

Carlisle Police said Hines opened fire on Burch around 3:45 p.m. June 21, 2018, 
while Burch was walking along the first block of North Penn Street in Carlisle 
with another man.

Burch was pronounced dead at the scene.

Bullets were found inside at least one home near the shooting, according to 
testimony provided at Hines’s preliminary hearing in September.

Sodus listed 2 aggravating circumstances in his filing against Hines.

The 1st is that Hines knowingly created a grave risk of death to another person 
in addition to Burch during the shooting.

The 2nd aggravating circumstance is that Hines has a history of felony 
convictions for violent behavior.

According to the affidavit of probable cause filed by Carlisle Police, Hines 
received a juvenile adjudication for aggravated assault.

Hines was arrested in August and has been held without bail ever since. He is 
currently being housed in Cumberland County Prison. Hines also faces multiple 
counts of felony drug possession with intent to deliver in a separate case.

Hines’s case is the 2nd active death penalty case currently being handled by 
the district attorney’s office.

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against Christopher Jaquell Williams, 
27, of Harrisburg, for allegedly shooting and killing 35-year-old Rhyhiem Hodge 
during what police described was a robbery inside Hodge’s home in Carlisle in 
November 2017.

Earlier this month, Robert Anderson, 41, of Carlisle, was convicted of 
1st-degree murder for killing 30-year-old Daniel Harris inside the Haines 
Stackfield American Legion on West Penn Street in June 2016.

Man convicted in Carlisle American Legion shooting sentenced to life without 
parole

Anderson was facing the death penalty in that case but ultimately a jury 
sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

(source: Carlisle Sentinel)








FLORIDA:

Prosecutors seeking death penalty again in 2005 murder case



A South Carolina man who killed a woman in a St. Johns County hotel in 2005 is 
back in court this week as prosecutors again seek the death penalty in his 
case.

Jury selection for James Daniel Turner began Monday in the St. Johns County 
courthouse before Circuit Judge Howard Maltz.

A jury convicted Turner of first-degree murder in 2007 for the stabbing death 
of Renee Boling Howard of Crescent Beach after he escaped from a South Carolina 
prison. Then-Circuit Court Judge Wendy Berger sentenced him to death in 2008 
after a 10-2 jury recommendation for the sentence during the penalty phase of 
his trial.

In 2017, Maltz vacated that sentence after the U.S. Supreme Court, in 2016, 
struck down Florida’s old sentencing scheme for death penalty cases.

The high court found the procedures violated the defendant’s right to a trial 
by jury by allowing the judge to make the final decision after considering the 
jury’s recommendation. It also took issue with those recommendations having to 
come from only a majority of jurors rather than a unanimous decision.

Prosecutors filed their notice of intent to seek the death penalty in July 
2017.

(source: St. Augustine Record)






********************

Killers kidnapped wrong man from Deltona apartment, prosecutor tells jurors in 
death penalty trial



Christian Cruz and Justen Charles decided one night 6 years ago to rob a drug 
dealer who they thought lived in the Bell Tower Avenue apartments in Deltona, a 
prosecutor told jurors on Monday.

The drug dealer, though, had moved out. The apartment was now occupied by 
25-year-old Christopher Jemery, a young father who didn’t use or deal drugs. On 
the night of Aug. 26, 2013, Jemery was alone, sitting on his couch eating a 
late dinner and watching television.

That’s when Cruz and Charles burst into the apartment, bound and gagged Jemery 
with duct tape and speaker wire, shot him in the head and, near death, dumped 
him in an industrial area in Sanford, the prosecutor said during opening 
statements in the first-degree murder trial of Cruz. He faces the death penalty 
if convicted.

“Presumably they were there in search of drugs. The only problem is Christopher 
Jemery isn’t a drug dealer,” Assistant State Attorney Ryan Will told jurors. 
“Christopher Jemery isn’t a drug user. He merely lived in an apartment where 
the former tenant used and smoked and sold small quantities of marijuana. 
Christian Cruz and Justen Charles made a terrible mistake.”

Only Cruz, who lived in Lakeland but has been held in the Volusia County Branch 
Jail since his arrest in 2013, is on trial before Circuit Judge Raul Zambrano 
at the S. James Foxman Justice Center. Charles, 30, will be tried separately at 
a later date.

Cruz, 25, was indicted on charges of 1st-degree premeditated murder, burglary 
while armed, robbery with a firearm and kidnapping. A jury of 8 men and 6 
women, including 2 alternate members, began hearing testimony on Monday for the 
trial which is expected to last several weeks. A 3rd alternate was dismissed 
Monday morning because he was ailing with a cold.

Cruz looked significantly different from the mugshot of his arrest as he sat 
between his two defense attorneys, Clyde Taylor Jr. and his son Clyde Taylor 
III. Cruz looked a little heavier. 2 long, thick dreadlocks were gone and his 
hair was cut short to his skull.

Taylor Jr. made the opening statement for the defense telling jurors that they 
would find reasonable doubt in the evidence. He said that no one saw Jemery 
being taken from the apartment or heard anything going on in the apartment.

“All of the evidence, and we will be here for a month, will not show you or 
prove to you in any way who shot Jemery,” Taylor Jr. said. “As a matter of 
fact, I don’t believe the evidence will show actually when the young man was 
shot or even where he was shot. ”

Cruz wrote occasionally on a legal pad and sometimes leaned over to talk to one 
of his attorneys. He yawned widely several times during testimony.

Cruz looked up without emotion at an overhead screen showing a picture of 
Jemery’s bruised, bloodied and bandaged head.

Even though Cruz and Charles had the wrong person, they did not stop their 
attack, according to Will, who is prosecuting the case along with Assistant 
State Attorney Tammy Jacques.

“The 2 men continued to use force and violence pushing this terrifying scenario 
to its extreme and unnecessary end,” Will said. “Bound and gagged, injured and 
bleeding Christopher Jemery was en route to the scene of his murder,” Will 
said. That scene was the end of 2291 W. Airport Blvd in Sanford, an industrial 
commercial area.

They left him barely alive in some bushes off a parking lot. That’s where a man 
coming to work found him the next morning and called 9-1-1. Jemery was taken to 
Orlando Regional Medical Center where he died three days later.

Investigators found that Jemery’s apartment had been ransacked, a pool of blood 
and an unfired .22-caliber bullet near a door.

“When the beating and threats did not yield acceptable answers they took him as 
their prisoner,” Will said.

Investigators also found fingerprints and DNA for one or both of the defendants 
in the victims’ apartment. Both Cruz and Charles’ DNA were found in Jemery’s 
car, which he had rented only 2 days before the murder after he was involved in 
a traffic accident.

And investigators also found Cruz’s left thumb print on a piece of duct tape 
removed from Jemery’s body.

A video shows Cruz making a withdrawal from Jemery’s account early on April 26, 
2013.

Will said: “The defendant took several hundred dollars from the account minutes 
after firing the shot that ended Christopher Jemery’s life.”

(source: Daytona Beach News-Journal)






****************

State Seeks Death Penalty For Man Accused of Killing Roommate Over Playstation 
Gaming System



Florida prosecutors announced their intention to seek the death penalty for a 
man who is accused of killing his roommate over a Playstation gaming system 
last year.

State prosecutors filed formal notice of intent to seek the death penalty for 
22-year-old Jake Adam Bilotta on the charge of 1st Degree Premeditated Murder 
in the killing of 24-year-old Joshua Barnes.

A grand jury indicted Bilotta on December 11, 2018.

According to state prosecutors, Bilotta planned to lure his former roommate on 
to a residence in unincorporated Maitland to get revenge for the theft of a 
Playstation.

When Bilotta entered the house on November 27, 2018, he attacked Barnes and 
stabbed him to death.

A 2nd suspect, 21-year-old Ian McClurg, was initially planning to help Bilotta 
carry out the attack but McClurg abandoned the plan shortly before the attack.

Bilotta and McClurg were arrested after a roommate walked in on the two men 
trying to place Barnes’ body in plastic bags. The roommate immediately called 
911 and alerted authorities.

McClurg has been charged with conspiracy to commit capital murder, tampering 
with evidence and accessory after the fact to 1st-degree murder.

Prosecutors have described the murder as “especially heinous, atrocious, or 
cruel” and “was committed in a cold, calculated, and premeditated manner 
without any pretense of moral or legal justification.”

Bilotta and McClurg will remain in custody with No Bond at the Seminole County 
Jail.

The case is set for Docket Review before Judge John Galluzzo on March 6 at 8:30 
a.m. from the Seminole County Criminal Justice Center.

(source: spacecoastdaily.com)








OHIO:

Man pleads guilty to killing 4 from family, including boy



The suspect in the deadly Ohio shootings of four relatives, including a 
7-year-old boy, and a related non-fatal stabbing has pleaded guilty to 
aggravated murder and other charges in the potential death-penalty case.

24-year-old Arron Lawson pleaded guilty to 13 counts last week in southern 
Ohio's Lawrence County. The case was scheduled to continue this week as judges 
consider whether Lawson should be sentenced to prison or death for the slayings 
at a home near Ironton in October 2017.

Prosecutors say he killed his adult cousin, her son, her mother and her 
stepfather, and wounded her husband, after the cousin broke off an affair with 
Lawson. A then-2-year-old boy was spared.

The Daily Independent of Ashland, Kentucky, reports attorney Kirk McVay 
defended Lawson, saying Lawson's parents abused and neglected him.

(source: Associated Press)








MISSOURI:

Judge: AG office not required to pay $40k for murder suspect's mitigation 
investigation



The Missouri Attorney General's Office will not be on the hook for thousands of 
dollars in paying for the mitigation investigation of a murder suspect.

Judge Steven Ohmer ruled Friday the state is no longer required to pay $40,000 
for Pablo Serrano-Vitorino's mitigation investigation, prosecuting attorney 
Nathan Carroz stated. The money would have gone toward funding a specialist to 
travel to Mexico to further investigate Serrano-Vitorino's background.

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty on charges of murder, burglary and 
armed criminal action in March 2016. Serrano-Vitorino led authorities on a 
14-hour manhunt after allegedly shooting and killing four people in Kansas 
City, Kansas, and fleeing the scene. Investigators said his car broke down on 
I-70 in Montgomery County, Missouri, near Randy Nordman's home.

Investigators have said Serrano-Vitorino then shot and killed Nordman. 
Authorities at the time said they did not believe the two men knew each other.

Serrano-Vitorino's trial is scheduled to start Oct. 7. Carroz stated the trial 
was expected to last more than 2 weeks.

(source: KRCG news)



COLORADO:

Colorado Governor expected to sign bill abolishing death penalty



A bill banning capital punishment in the State of Colorado is expected to pass 
in early 2019, an effort that Archbishop Samuel J. Aquila has supported, and 
that Colorado Governor Jared Polis said he would sign should the legislature 
present it to him.

In his speech during the March for Life Jan. 12, Archbishop Aquila assured that 
disagreements with politicians on life issues would not prevent him from 
collaborating with them on the abolishment of this measure.

“During this legislative session, we hope to see an effort to repeal the death 
penalty in Colorado, a measure that the Church has long advocated for, since 
our prison system can ensure these criminals pose no danger to the public once 
they are incarcerated. We also know that men who have been condemned to death 
have converted and have changed. They have opened their hearts to the one who 
can give them light.

“All life has dignity and worth, even the lives of those who have killed 
others. The State should not participate in the cycle of violence by taking 
life but should instead strive to protect it.”

In an interview with 9NEWS in November 2018, Governor Polis said he would sign 
a bill repealing the death penalty and expressed his opposition to the current 
measures.

Colorado has executed a total of 101 people in its history, all of them males 
found guilty of murder. Yet, the state has only executed 2 person — in 1977 — 
since the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1975.

The State of Colorado can still impose the death penalty in class 1 felony 
cases, which involve certain murders, kidnapping or treason. These may include 
the death of law enforcement officers, of children under 12, the usage of 
explosive devices, extreme indifference to human life or extremely cruel 
conduct.

The Church has traditionally held that the dignity of a person is not lost even 
after having committed a grave crime.

Nonetheless, as the Catechism states, it has also traditionally taught that “it 
is legitimate to insist on respect for one’s own right to life,” which means 
that “someone who defends his life is not guilty of murder even if he is forced 
to deal his transgressor a lethal blow.”

In the case of those who hold a position of authority and are responsible for 
many lives, “legitimate defense cannot only be a right but a grave duty… The 
defense of the common good requires that an unjust aggressor be rendered unable 
to cause harm.”

The Catechism continues: “the traditional teaching of the Church does not 
exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of 
effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.

“If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people’s 
safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these 
are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and more in 
conformity to the dignity of the human person” (CCC 2263-2267, prior to May 11, 
2018).

In a recent change to this section of the Catechism, Pope Francis called for 
the repeal of capital punishment worldwide, a measure that Archbishop Aquila 
assures can already be implemented in Colorado.

(source: denvercatholic.org)








WASHINGTON:

State Representative is sister of murder victim, fighting against death penalty 
repeal



A state lawmaker says she has powerful reasons why she is fighting to keep the 
death penalty. Her sister was murdered by the Green River Killer, Gary Ridgway.

"We are not going to sit down," said Rep. Jenny Graham, R-Spokane. "We are not 
going to be quiet. We are not going to continue being ignored."

Graham said it is important to keep the death penalty. It was a key bargaining 
tool in the Ridgway case by giving him life without parole in exchange for 
telling where 41 other victims were.

"It's not okay to ignore that without Gary Ridgway being afraid of losing his 
life — of dying himself — he would have had zero incentive to give any more 
information," Graham said.

She got a chance to look Ridgway in the eye when he agreed to talk with her in 
prison. She wanted to know why he killed her sister Debra Estes, the ninth 
victim of the spree that would take at least 49 lives.

"He came as close to saying that he was sorry," Graham said. "I think that he 
has was capable of being able to do. He did regret it every day."

This is the same man that she lashed out during his 2003 sentencing. "Shame on 
you Gary Ridgway," she said in open court. "May God have mercy on your pathetic 
soul because the rest of us who know the pathetic truth about you wont."

Keith Eldridge: State Representative is sister of murder victim, fighting 
against death penalty repeal

"I believe that it (the prison interview) was healing for me," said in her 
office at the state legislature. "I felt a lot of the weight off of my 
shoulders when I left."

Now there is a different kind of weight as she fights to keep the death 
penalty. But supporters of the bill said it is outmoded and ruled 
unconstitutional. "It's time to stop trying to fix an unfixable law," testified 
Eric Gonzales-Alfaro of the ACLU.

Glen Anderson, Olympia Committee for Alternatives to the Death Penalty 
testified, There is no way to fix the death penalty which is inherently unjust 
and racist."

Graham disagreed.

"When he was murdering his victims he didn't care what color they were. And 
I'll guarantee you when he was choking the life out of his victims they didn't 
care what color he was. This has nothing to do with color. Nothing," Graham 
said.

The death penalty repeal bill (SB 5339) has passed the Senate and is now headed 
to the House Public Safety committee on which Rep. Graham sits.

(source: KOMO news)

*********************

Senate passes bill to remove the death penalty



The Senate passed a bill Friday to remove the death penalty from Washington 
state statute and replacing it with life in prison without parole.

Senate Bill 5339 passed with 28 in favor, 19 opposed, with senators Phil 
Fortunado, R-Auburn and Lynda Wilson, R-Vancouver, excused.

Republican senators Judy Warnick, R-Moses Lake and Brad Hawkins R-Wenatchee, 
and sponsor Maureen Walsh, R-Walla Walla voting in support of the typically 
democratic bill. Democratic senators Tim Sheldon, D-Potlatch, Dean Takko, 
D-Longview, and Kevin Van De Wege, D-Sequium voted against the bill.

The Senate passed a similar bill last year prior to the state Supreme Court 
declaring the death penalty as applied was racist and arbitrary. The bill was 
never brought to a vote in the House.

House Bill 1488 is the companion to the bill passed in the Senate and has yet 
to hear public testimony.

Sen. Steve O’Ban, R-Tacoma, believes it is possible to create a death penalty 
that the Supreme Court would approve, saying the Senate has a “lack of will” to 
find a solution.

Sen. Jamie Pedersen, D-Seattle, spoke in support of the bill citing the 
testimony that took place in the Law and Justice Committee which he chairs.

Former state Secretary of the Department of Corrections Dick Morgan testified 
in support of the bill in committee on Feb. 5, speaking on behalf of several 
other previous DOC secretaries. Morgan said hundreds of prisoners have 
committed similar crimes and were sentenced to life without parole yet from a 
management viewpoint they pose no greater risk than those on death row.

“There is punishment that exceeds normal imprisonment and that is placement in 
the highest security level … ,” said Morgan. “That basically results in no 
physical human contact with another person while that punishment is in place. 
It’s profound, it’s desocialization of an inmate in they’re violent enough, if 
the misconduct warrants it.”

During the floor debate Sen. Keith Wagoner, R-Sedro-Woolley read a statement 
from the killer of Jayme Biendl, a correctional officer murdered in 2011 by an 
inmate already serving life in prison. Wagoner argued that if the death penalty 
is taken off the table there is no further punishment for inmates who commit 
crimes while serving life in prison.

Sen. Mike Padden, R-Spokane Valley, ranking member on the Law and Justice 
Committee, acknowledged pursuing the death penalty is difficult and expensive.

“I’m not a zealot for the death penalty,” said Padden. “I’m somewhat of a 
reluctant supporter.”

Since 1904, 78 people have been executed in Washington state, according to the 
Department of Corrections. The last execution took place in 2010.

(source: Snoqualmie Valley Record)








USA:

Junk Science Sends the Wrong People to Prison There are five reasons and even 
more causes that lead to wrongful convictions.



What causes wrongful convictions? As I posted recently, it comes down to about 
five reasons (although as the National Registry of Exonerations points out, 
many cases have multiple causes):

Highest in adult sexual assault cases (31%) and homicide (23%), false or 
misleading forensic evidence can be just as vexing an issue as false 
confessions, due primarily to the CSI Effect. Documented as far back as 2004, 
the phenomenon can cause issues for prosecutors and defense attorneys alike, by 
giving juries unrealistic expectations as to the capabilities of crime labs.

What are we talking about when we say the evidence is false or misleading? It 
could be a number of things. There have been cases where evidence was planted 
by investigators. Those are presumably rare, and I’m not certain how NRE 
considers planted evidence. Does it fall under this category or Official 
Misconduct? Examples such as the 1993 New York State Police Troop C scandal are 
particularly egregious.

This category could cover a number of issues, but here are four major areas of 
concern.

Bite Marks

Radley Balko has written extensively on the junk science behind bite mark 
evidence. The idea is that forensic dental specialists can match bite marks on 
a person or body with a copy of the accused person’s teeth and do so with some 
high degree of success, because in theory, human dentition is unique, and human 
skin can register and record that uniqueness in a useful way.

The reality of the matter is that human skin is a horrible medium for 
preserving indentations and marks like bites. It stretches during the bite, and 
may or may not go back to its original shape. But more importantly, it hasn’t 
been proven that human teeth are as specifically identifiable and unique as 
fingerprints or DNA.

It’s one thing for a forensic odontologist to take a specific jaw or skull and 
compare it to a specific set of medical records in an effort to identify the 
skull or jaw. You’re comparing one objective thing to another. The medical 
record shows fillings in these three positions; the suspect jaw shows three 
fillings in the same position. X-rays of the fillings appear to match. The 
tooth counts match. That’s a fairly straight-forward process and pretty 
objective.

Bite-mark matching is a bigger issue though. Before the mark can be compared to 
a suspect’s teeth, it must first be identified as a bite mark, and one made by 
a human. While that sounds easily done, a survey by the American Board of 
Forensic Odontology – the group that certifies bite-mark examiners – found a 
distinct lack of agreement on whether individual bites were of human origin. 
The group surveyed 39 examiners, giving them the same 100 bite mark photos and 
asked three basic questions:

Is there sufficient evidence in the presented materials to render an opinion on 
whether the patterned injury is a human bite mark?

Is it a human bite mark, not a human bite mark, or suggestive of a human bite 
mark?

Does the bite mark have distinct, identifiable arches and individual tooth 
marks?

By the time the examiners worked their way through the process, they only 
agreed on 4 of the 100 photos. 4 %.

People are being sent to death row on the basis of bite mark evidence, and 39 
certified examiners can’t come to an agreement on known examples. That should 
indicate some sort of problem, but the ABFO seems more interested in processes 
than results. The situation will not change until the ABFO makes it a priority. 
Until then, the best anyone can do is to keep trying.

Hair Analysis

This is the yang to the yin of bite-mark analysis. Both forensic tools revolve 
around subjective, pattern-based forensic techniques. We’re not talking DNA 
samples from hair here, but rather comparing two separate hairs, and saying 
they came from the same person. The FBI estimates as of a year ago that FBI 
hair examiners have given flawed testimony in over 95 % of the cases examined. 
32 of those cases were death-penalty cases, and in 14 of those cases, the 
defendant has either been executed or has died in prison.

The Justice Department announced in February 2016 that it would expand its 
review of pattern-based forensic techniques, which include bite-mark and hair 
analysis as well as firing-pin impressions, shoe treads, and fiber evidence. I 
suspect we’ll be hearing about more exonerations as that review continues.

Arson Investigation

For years, many arson investigators have learned “on-the-job” from previous 
investigators, and they’ve passed on time-honored knowledge about the telltale 
signs of an arson fire. These typically included nuggets of wisdom such as, 
“Crazed glass in windows shows it was a very hot fire, and that means it was 
arson.” But that’s since been determined to be false. It’s not rapid heating 
that causes glass to craze, it’s rapid cooling, such as might occur when a hot 
glass gets hit with cold water from a fire hose.

The investigator who determined that Cameron Willingham had set the fire that 
killed his three girls testified that he had investigated over a thousand fires 
in his career, and every single one of them was an arson fire. All of his 
knowledge came from hand-me-down ideas like this before science really 
understood how fire worked, and what a flashover was, and what kind of damage 
it causes. But all of his knowledge was based on false assumptions, so what 
does that mean for Cameron Willingham?

The NRE lists 26 exonerations that involved arson and false/misleading forensic 
evidence. That’s about 1.5% of the exonerations. There are probably more to 
come.

Unqualified Staff

We like to assume that the people conducting investigations and lab tests and 
autopsies are trained and qualified to do what they’re doing. That’s something 
of a societal linchpin, isn’t it? That the people who protect us are 
knowledgeable about their duties and responsibilities?

But what if they’re not? What happens when you’ve got a forensic pathologist 
performing 5 times the number of autopsies the National Association of Medical 
Examiners allows and isn’t even board certified in pathology?

What happens when half of your lab staff can’t pass proficiency testing?

Some jurisdictions take drastic measures to fix the problem, as Houston did in 
2002.

It’s a national problem though, with cases popping up in New York, 
Philadelphia, St. Paul, and West Virginia. One judge remarked that the work of 
the serologist involved was so poor that everything he had done should be 
considered “invalid, unreliable and inadmissible.”

Now What?

The FBI’s move to expand its review would be an excellent idea if there is 
official support for the follow-through. We can’t just look at a few cases, 
determine there’s a problem, then go on with life. The government must, at all 
levels, be willing to respond reasonably to the issues being raised, actively 
seek out errors, then promptly remedy those errors and make the victims of 
those errors whole again. That doesn’t stop with letting them out of prison and 
wishing them well.

People wrongfully convicted deserve to be compensated for what they’ve lost in 
life. – but that’s another post.

(source: Bob Mueller, goodmenproject.com)

**********************

Sr. Prejean wages constant fight for lives on death row



While some might say Sr. Helen Prejean has experienced great success in her 
fight to abolish the death penalty, she believes she’s only helped make some 
strides in the battle.

After all, it’s hard to claim success when nearly 2,400 people remain on death 
row in the United States.

“I don’t see success at all, because the suffering and the torture is so 
terrible, as long as even 1 person is in that situation, and it’s legalized,” 
she said. “I know you can see we’ve made strides, (but) I would never talk 
about it in terms of success.”

It’s why the American nun from the Congregation of St. Joseph continues to 
fight for death row inmates. Her story was told in her book Dead Man Walking 
that became the 1995 film, garnering four Academy Award nominations and an 
Oscar for Susan Sarandon, who played Prejean.

Prejean is bringing her Dead Man Walking: The Journey Continues… message to the 
Toronto area including a March 1 appearance at St. Jerome’s University in 
Waterloo, Ont., as part of its Lectures in Catholic Experience series.

Much has changed since Prejean, 79, helped start the conversation on capital 
punishment. Since the release of her book and the film, eight American states 
have abolished the death penalty, and even in Texas, a sort of ground zero 
state for supporters of capital punishment, prosecutors have stopped trying to 
put prisoners to death due to the “exorbitant cost,” said Prejean. But in 30 
states, the federal government and the military, capital punishment remains an 
option.

It’s why Prejean continues the journey that has absorbed her life for three 
decades. Polls show that huge numbers still support putting the worst criminals 
to death. Supporters of the death sentence aren’t bad people, she said, 
“they’re just not awake.” It comes from an ignorance and “the isolated 
lifestyle that’s not in touch with people beyond their own little small 
boundaries,” she said.

“My job is to bring them close, to help them see it so they can respond and 
that’s been the journey of the last 30 years.”

Part of that education is understanding a system in which the majority of death 
row inmates have some things in common: they are poor and they lacked proper 
legal representation.

“People get sent to death row not because of the nature of the crime but 
because of the nature of the lawyer they had and the zeal of the prosecutor on 
the other side,” she said.

The people in the pews come under some fire from Prejean, who notes that many 
polls show that the “more people went to church, the more they believed in the 
death penalty.”

“What in the world is the theology, or people’s concept of faith, that they 
would believe in the death penalty more than people who never stepped inside a 
church?” she wonders.

She’s pleased that Pope Francis on Aug. 2, 2018 formally changed Vatican 
teaching to declare capital punishment wrong in all circumstances. It follows 
on dialogue she had with Pope John Paul II, which she said was the turning 
point in the Church making a change.

As for Canada, it may not have capital punishment but Prejean sees issues in 
how the poor and minorities, particularly Indigenous, are overrepresented in 
our penal system.

“It’s always the poor, always the minorities, you’re going to always (have 
filling prisons), when you have a certain system and the prejudices against 
certain people in society,” she said.

(source: Catholic Register)